The AFC Technical and Vision Asia Committee, with HRH Tengku Abdullah Ibni Sultan Ahmed Shah of Malaysia in the chair, reviewed the activity reports of the Education and Vision Asia departments and provided direction for the future.

At the outset, AFC President Mohamed Bin Hammam said the time had come to rethink the committee’s involvement in technical matters.

“We mainly believe in going through administrative matters than technical in this committee but the technical side of the game will be taken care of now after the AFC Executive Committee last year approved the formation of an AFC Coaching Committee,” he said.

“I think a lot of work needs to be done apart from technical evaluation of our teams in tournaments and this committee has played its part in technical and Vision Asia matters.

“Everybody is now looking forward to better results in the future.”

The members discussed the criteria for determining the new list of beneficiaries of AFC’s AID27 programme and suggested amendments to the AID27 regulations.

AID27 is part of the Vision Asia project and provides financial assistance to specified member associations of AFC to assist them in hiring qualified coaches for non-senior national and regional programmes. The scheme is aimed at developing grassroots and youth football.

The committee also approved the following recommendations:

- Criteria for the selection of Technical Study Group members.

- Expansion of Vision Asia to 16 new projects in five countries.

- Removal of two national (Bahrain and Uzbekistan) and five provincial or city projects (Delhi and Tamil Nadu, India; Hanoi, Vietnam; Bukhara and Tashkent, Uzbekistan).

- Suspension of three national level projects (Kyrgyzstan, Oman, Maldives) and one city project (Chui, Kyrgyzstan).